Beleaguered or Becoming: Higher Education’s Path Forward in the Next Decade

In prior decades the higher education community has organized itself around reform objectives with clear calls to action. Improving access to a college education and working to improve college completion were calls that unified much of the higher education community in the past. A variety of challenging dynamics from evolving student demographics, stranded student debt to concerns over value of the degree to eliminating the college degree as a job requirement to calls for increased regulation have left the sector and those that work in it feeling beleaguered. What will be the call to action of the coming decade? There are powerful cultural, political, economic and technological catalysts for change at work and this panel will explore what higher education is becoming across the next decade from the perspective of three critical stakeholders: learners, employers and society at large.